I’ve been doing a lot of research on the practice of computing the digits of Pi. The first question is, “Why?”. In the great majority of real-world applications, an approximation of few digits (i.e. 3.14) is close enough — it’s hard to imagine any calculation where an approximation to 20 digits would not be accurate enough.
One of the most interesting things about Pi is how much we don’t know — the “state of our ignorance” as Borwein puts it (CHECK). For instance, in all calculations so far, the frequency of decimal and hexidecimal digits has been very close to what you would expect from a completely random distribbution of digits (each digit has about 1/10th probability of occurring, or 1/16th for hexadecimal)… but there is no proof that this must be the case for all digits. In “Contact” by Arthur Clarke he speculated about a binary “message” hidden in the digits of Pi — we currently have no proof that such a message or similar statistical anomaly exists, though of course it seems unlikely.
Also, as an excersize in computability and algorithms, it is somewhat interesting to look at the records for calculating the digits of pi. The last few records have been set by Professor Kanada, using a number of supercomputers… the current record is about 1.3 trillion digits. In ASCII format, that’s 1.3TB of digits (or in a more efficient 4-bits-per-digit representation, 650GB). This means that memory/disk efficiency will be key, and algorithms that calculate digits indiviually will probably be preferred; if at all-possible, the only number of the final precision we want to store/use in our algorithm is our final answer, not a number of intermediate steps.

The algorithms for approximating Pi involve some kind of converging series.

I figured I would upload a bunch of cellphone pictures and comment on them.

Here is our table.. you can see various dumplings and mystery items in front of us.

Here is a view across the restaurant, the part in the foreground is only about 1/4 of the overall space. The place was HUGE, and basically they bring carts of dumplings and things past and say what they are (in chinese), and you grab what you want. Unfortunately, as a vegetarian, none of them seemed to know what the word “Meat” meant.

Here is the computer I am building. It has a Dallas version of an Intel 8032 as the CPU, and 32K of external memory, a 16 bit address bus (but the upper 32k of addresses are all IO space due to some lazy IO decoding), and an 8-bit data bus. I am building it as part of the engineering sciences E-123: Digital Circuit Design course at Harvard Extension school. Notice the nice hex keypad. Right now I have to manually program it a byte at a time, because I have not yet added a serial port and software to allow me to send data from the serial port into memory.

Here are a couple of the guys with the potato cannon I built. Notice the landern igniter and large cumbustion chamber.

Here is a typical Harvard undergrad, she has fallen asleep in a common room while studying with her laptop.

Hopefully I can rock the spring term the same way I did the fall, I’m taking Intro to Logic, Digital Circuit Design, and Analysis + Number Theory. The analysis course is the only one that has me worried, I’m a little rusty on the math stuff.

It was after sunset, and all light had been extinguised in the clearing, circled by small tents and cabins. Moments before, it had been bustling with activity, but now it was strangely silent and empty, with a few other scattered strangers disappearing in darkness as the last lights of day faded and clouds obscured the starlight. People like me, who weren’t sure they belonged.

And then – in the distance – multitudinous sweet voices in harmony could be heard approaching. Moments later, a column of dim hooded shapes snaked past, circling the field. They seemed to be singing of joy and wonder — and of ideals, and of service, and of their Queen. Small figures in green could barely be seen.
They come to a stop, and stand at attention. A woman approaches the center and lights a camp fire — the light illuminates young faces that were hidden before. She addresses them all and leads them in prayer. They respond to her in voices and songs, knowing their part in this secretive ceremony. Each girl is brought to the center of the circle and given solumn rewards and honors for her accomplishments. Finally, a candle is lit, and as the points of light spread around the circle the faces are illuminated in a promise, a covenant to keep the spirit alive until next year.

Download the mp3 of my podcast — this is an empathic argument for open access in education, inspired by eminem’s final battle in “8 mile” where he wins by making the other guy’s argument for him. No apologies to Weird Al, this is some homegrown dirty south style white boy crunk.

Because of my Cyberone class I’ve been thinking a lot about virtual worlds and the ethics and control systems inside those worlds. I am wondering, what would it take to create a totalitarian, oppressive government inside Second Life? Could one arise independently of the world’s technical admins?

I thought I’d upload this essay I did for a summer expository writing class. I took the class with my stepson Avery, it was a lot of fun. The essay is about how free software saved my life, and the way I feel I must repay that debt of honor.

Hola amigos, it’s been a while since I rapped at ya. I’ve been really busy with school and work and marriage and step-fatherhood and all the other stuff I do to keep busy. Just last week my company started running radio ads for the product I designed, efact. We’ve also sent out postcards to a few thousand real estate conveyancers, and have a team of cold-callers calling all of those conveyancers to tell them about the product. It seems to be selling very well, but the rollout is keeping me very busy.

My classes are just starting right now also — I am in a class called CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion. It is taught by Charles Nesson and his daughter Rebecca. It’s only been going for a week, but so far it seems like it might be one of the coolest classes I’ve ever taken. Parts of the class are being held in Second Life, and CBS Evening News is supposedly going to do a special about it because it is so innovative. I am also taking a programming class (on linux, unix, C, CGI) and a laboratory electronics class.

I’ve had some kind of illness for quite a while now, I’ve been on two different kinds of antibiotics but I just can’t seem to kick it. I hope I get better soon.

I saw this link to an LA Times story. Stephen Heller, a word processor who stole copies of internal Diebold documents revealing that they had violated California state law and sold uncertified voting machines, is now facing felony charges for access to computer data and computer burglary.

It’s a sad day in America when Sony can break into hundreds of thousands of computers (including government, military, etc) to illegally spy in order to try to profit, and get a slap on the wrist, while a whisleblower who reveals corrupt voting machine manufacturers and potential voter fraud faces felony charges.

While I certainly understand where all of the protestors are coming from with the current anti-google movement, I’d like to put forth a conflicting opinion. I, for one, actually buy the excuse that it is worth participating in some censorship just to be able to enter the market. I believe there are a number of reasons for this:

Intelligence. The more information that American companies have about what the Chinese Communist Party is doing, the more we can potentially help those in China who want to end oppression. Google is the world thought-leader on aggressive information collection and data mining; there is so much potential good that could be done with the information they will be collecting there.

Presence. The more progressive companies that are in China, there are more opportunities to subtly influence China in order to help advance freedom.

Conspiracy Theory. I believe google is part of a conspiracy to do good in China, to work as a “secret agent” against the Communist Party’s strangehold in any number of different ways. They are coordinating and networking with other progressives in China and in the end will do a lot of good that they can’t tell us about. Obviously, when you are acting secretly in a totalitarian country, you can’t publish a press release saying “Leave us alone, protestors, we’re actually secret agents of Democracy.”

Here’s a link you probably won’t see anywhere else, an article from China Daily (the state-run periodical, the voice of the Chinese Communist Party in English essentially) mentioning John Howkins’ talk at a chinese business summit. He talks about how adopting US-style copyright and patent law might have a downside, and emphasizes that future IP law should embrace innovators who want to share their work as well as ones who want to protect it.

I hope they listen to him. And I hope they abandon their one-party government and adopt a sensible representative democracy, while they’re at it.

I have always felt very strongly that technology can serve as a tool of oppression or a tool of liberation. Perhaps when we have made enough progress in our struggle I will change the name of the site to cyberliberation instead of cyberoppression.

I wanted to take this opportunity to create a quick overview of how those of strong character and good hearts must work to prevent the totalitarian nightmare that technology might lead to, and how to instead work towards creating a better future for our children.

Law — we need to send enlightened students to law schools all over the world, and lots of them. We need to reach out to lawyers that are already out there on both sides of the issue, particularly lawyers on the wrong side, and campaign to open their eyes to how they are destroying the future for their children. We need to use the political processes of grass-roots political action to raise awareness of technology-freedom issues, and we need to fight the various corporate and totalitarian influences any way possible.

Technology — we must also reach out to engineers and scientists, not just in America but all over the world. We need to support free software and progressive software licensing. We need to work on the technological side to bypass DRM, bypass filtering, bypass wiretapping, bypass spying. We need to turn the corporate totalitarian ideas of control on their head: instead of the corporations and governments using databases and other technologies to monitor us, WE must use those technologies to monitor THEM. We need to keep track of who they are, what they are doing, when, how, and why. We must work towards the “opening” of all designs. This effort also needs to reach into other technologies as well, not just electronics. The same strategies must be applied to biotechnology and nanotechnology.

Economics — we must support progressive companies, and develop more progressive business models. We need to patronize musicians that sell directly to the consumer. We need to patronize software companies that develop GPL’ed software. We need to reward companies that do the right thing. We also need to put Microsoft, Cisco, and every single MPAA or RIAA member company out of business. We need to organize boycotts.

Norms — we must also reach out to the public, and make sure they are aware of all of these issues. We need to hold protests, send letters, and hold rallies. We need to reach out to the school systems and make sure that corporate propoganda does not make it to students’ ears.

If we do all of this, we have a chance at a future where everyone in the world has absolutely guaranteed human rights and civil liberties. We have a chance at a world where the slightest hint of oppression is met instantly by an overwhelming power of people doing good. We have a chance at a world where everyone has free access to a world-class education, access to study at Harvard or Cambridge or anyplace else. Access to teachers, mentors, books. Access to communications.

It’s interesting because though this site is almost certainly _technically_ in violation of copyright, these are programs with absolutely no commercial potention and that are no longer being sold or manufactured. In many cases, the companies that originally produced them are out of business. There is very little threat that those running the site will be sued for copyright violation. To me, this brings up an interesting point: that the current indefinite copyright period (every 20 years the industry pumps a few million into lobbyists in order to get Congress to retroactively extend it another 20 years, so at the rate copyright for 20th century works will never expire) is completely out of line with the pace of the software industry.

I noticed a link to this site from Slashdot. Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman, two lawyers in NYC, have created this site to compile information that might help assist people defending themselves against RIAA lawsuits. Slashdot mentioned that they are defending a woman the RIAA sued for music piracy who actually has never owned a computer in her life. It’s nice to know there are men of strong conscience out there, fighting the good fight.

The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, whose members include dozens of national newspaper trade bodies, said it is exploring ways to “challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without fair compensation to copyright owners.”

This is very typical of the content industry’s response to innovation. Google is bringing their sites more traffic and interest. I find their approach to be hypocrisy in the extreme; they claim Google is trying to profit from their works without fair compensation, when in fact Google is providing a valuable service. It’s the newspaper industry themselves who no longer provide the same valuable and necessary service they once did; the ability of the internet to instantly distribute content from writers to readers at little or no cost has made much of the service provided by publishers (who once served as a middleman between content and consumer) obsolete. An industry faced with the prospect of obsolescence, instead of finding ways to change their business model so that they can continue to provide a valuable middle-man service (like google is doing), are concentrating on trying to legislate a permanent monopoly, a “right to profit” in order to preserve their relevance.